The Beach (8 page)

Naturally it fell to me to entertain him. Berti, sitting on the edge of his chair, gazed at us patiently. I asked him what he was doing alone up here,- he answered like someone trying hard to listen to the orchestra.

"My friend tells me you have stopped studying," Doro put in. "What are you doing, working?"

"I am unemployed," Berti retorted, somewhat fiercely.

"My friend tells me that you're enjoying yourself," Doro went on. "Have you made friends?"

Berti merely said no. We were all silent. Clelia, half turned toward the orchestra, said: "Berti, do you dance?"

I was grateful to her for those words. Berti forced himself to meet her eyes and nodded. "It's a shame that Ginetta and Luisella haven't come," Clelia said. "You know them, don't you?" Without looking away, Berti replied that he did. "Aren't we going to dance?" said Clelia.

None of us said anything as they moved off. Guido made a fuss to get a coffee spoon; meanwhile I looked over at Doro. He must have seen an anxious question on my face, because as I was about to hide my embarrassment by staring off in another direction, I noticed him frowning, then smiling halfheartedly.

"What is it?" Guido asked, getting up.

Clelia and Berti came back almost at once. Whether the band was playing faster than usual or whether my nervousness had distracted me I can't say, but back they came, and Clelia said something I can't recall, something she might have said climbing out of a taxi. Berti followed her like a shadow.

They danced once again in the course of the evening. I think Clelia had encouraged him with a look. Berti rose without saying anything and, scarcely looking at her, waited for Clelia to join him. During the intervals when I was sitting at the table either with Doro or with Guido, occasionally one of us would address a word to Berti, who answered condescendingly, in monosyllables. Guido danced often with Clelia, returning to the table with sparkling eyes. Then we all stayed at the table for a while, gossiping. Berti made an effort not to look at Clelia too much, watching the orchestra in a bored, absent-minded way. He said nothing. At this point Guido spoke to him: "Are you taking makeup exams this autumn?"

"No," Berti muttered calmly.

"Because you have more the face of an exam-taker than of an educated person."

Berti grinned foolishly. Clelia smiled, too. Doro stayed put. Seconds passed and nobody spoke. Guido scowled at us and mumbled something. Most offensive of all was the half-scornful grin he dedicated to Berti. As if to say: "That's done. Let's forget it."

Berti said nothing. He went on smiling vaguely. All at once Clelia said: "Shall we dance?" I raised my head. Berti got up.

Clelia came back to the table, calmly nodding to someone she knew on her way. She sat down,- there was a tired, almost sulky expression on her face, and without looking at us, she murmured: "I hope that now you're going to be more entertaining." A number of her friends emerged from the shadow and distracted her.

During our ride home in the car, Clelia replied, to a hint of mine, that Berti had not said a word while they were dancing. But Guido, on the other hand, said a great many when the two of us went later for a last trip to the bar. He explained that he couldn't stand boys and especially couldn't allow them to put on the air of reading him a lesson. "They too have to live," I said, "and learn from experience."

"Let them wait until they've run through as many as we have," Guido said stubbornly.

Nina was waiting for him at the bar. I was expecting her. She was sitting at a low table, her chin on her fist, watching the smoke from her cigarette. She nodded to us, and while Guido was ordering at the bar, she asked me in her husky, uneven voice, but without moving her arm, why I hadn't shown up sooner.

"What about yesterday evening?" I said.

"You don't dance, you don't sunbathe, you don't eat with anyone, why don't you come with us? Oh, Guido's friends! What has that woman got to seduce you all? Don't tell me it's the engineer's company you're after."

"I'm not saying anything," I stammered.

It was so warm that evening it was a shame to go inside. I had no idea whether or not Berti was waiting for me at the foot of the stairs. Probably he had gone to sit on the beach and mull over his shame. I wouldn't have wanted to see him. Back in my room, I stood for a long time at the window.

Berti called me from the street early the next morning. Our lane was still completely in shadow. He asked if I weren't coming with him to swim. He was quiet awhile, then asked if he could come up. He entered aggressively, his eyes shining and tired. "Does this seem the right time?" I said. He looked as if he hadn't slept and told me as much right off, very casually. He seemed actually proud of it. "Come to the sea, professor," he insisted. "There's nobody there."

I had to write a letter. "Professor," he said, after a short pause, "all you have to do is turn the night into day and everything becomes beautiful."

I looked up from my paper. "Troubles at your age are light."

Berti smiled with a certain hardness. "Why should I have troubles?" He looked down.

"I thought you had quarreled..." I said.

"With whom?" he interrupted.

"All right, then," I grumbled.

"Come in swimming, professor," Berti said. "The sea is huge."

I told him I would be coming later with my friends and to leave me in peace. He went, with an expression half serious, half irritated, and immediately I blamed myself for having treated him so meanly. But patience, I thought, you are learning something at his expense.

I met Guido at the bar. He was wearing white shorts and an open-neck shirt as usual; the bogus virility of his tan made me smile. Guido smiled and held out his hand, raising his eyes to the roofs, sly and severe at once. "What a day!" he said. It was indeed a wonderful sky and a splendid morning. "Have a glass of Marsala, professor. Last night, eh?" He winked, I don't know why, and refused to let me go. "And what is the beautiful Clelia doing?" he said.

"I've just come from my room."

"Always the sober one, eh, professor?"

We walked off. He asked me if I were staying much longer. "I'm beginning to have enough," I said. "Too many complications."

Guido was not listening, or perhaps he missed the point.

"You don't have company," he said.

"I have my friends."

"Not enough. I share the same friends, but I wouldn't be in such fine form this morning if I'd slept in a single bed."

As I didn't reply, he explained that he also enjoyed Clelia's company, but the smoke was not the roast.

"And the roast would be..."

Guido laughed loudly. "There are women of flesh," he said, "and women of air. A deep breath after dinner is great. But first you have to eat."

Actually, I said, I was at the sea for Doro's sake.

"Incidentally," I added, "he's not painting any more."

"It's about time," retorted Guido.

But neither Clelia nor Doro came to the beach that morning. Neither Gisella nor any of the others knew why. I got impatient by noon, and taking advantage of the others' plans for a boat trip, I went home to dress and climbed up to the villa. No one in the street. I was about to open the gate when Doro and an elderly gentleman with a cane and a panama hat came out on the walk. The latter walked slowly toward the road, nodding at things I couldn't hear. Doro, when we were alone, looked at me with dancing eyes.

"What's going on?" I said.

"It happens that Clelia is pregnant."

Before showing my pleasure, I waited for Doro to give the lead. We went up the walk toward the steps. Doro seemed amused and unbelieving. "The truth is, you're happy," I said.

"I want to see how it works out first," he said. "It's the first time it's happened to me."

Then Clelia came out of her room, asking who was there. She smiled at me, almost as if to excuse herself, and put her handkerchief to her mouth. "Don't I disgust you?" she said.

Then we talked about the doctor, who had run on a good deal about responsibility and wanted to return with all sorts of instruments to make a scientific diagnosis. "What a nut!" Clelia said.

"Nonsense," Doro retorted. "Today we are going to take the train to Genoa. You've got to see De Luca."

Clelia looked at me. "You see," she said. "Paternity has started already. He's giving orders."

I said I was sorry they would have to cut off their vacation; but otherwise it was a fine thing.

"And you think I'm not sorry too?" Clelia grumbled.

Doro was counting on his fingers. "It'll be more or less..."

"Knock it off," Clelia said.

Instead of going by train, they went in Guido's car. Doro kept me company as far as the village, confiding a certain distaste for having to discuss it all with everybody; he would have preferred a dislocation or a fracture. He chattered and joked about trivialities.

"You're more worked up than Clelia," I told him.

"Oh, Clelia is resigned already," Doro returned, "so resigned it gives me a pain."

"Didn't you expect it?"

"It's like a lottery," Doro said. "You put your ticket in your pocket and forget about it."

That afternoon I was with Clelia, saying goodbye, when Guido brought his car to the gate. I watched her circulate through the rooms, as she did up parcels, the maid running about. Every so often Clelia would sigh and come to the window where I was leaning, like a hostess making the rounds of her guests who reserves for one of them the privilege of hearing about her tiredness and boredom.

"Happy to be going back to Genoa?" I asked.

She gave a distracted smile and nodded.

"Doro likes unexpected journeys," I said. "Let's hope this is the last."

Even this allusion escaped her. She merely said that in these things one couldn't be sure of anything; then she blushed as she got the point, saying: "You brute."

I told her that I, too, would be leaving the coast. I was going home. "I'm sorry," she said. At the least, I told her, I was happy to have spent with her her last summer as a girl. For a second Clelia became that girl of past days: she stood still and straight and said softly: "It's true. What a nuisance I was. You must have been very bored, you poor boy."

They left halfway through the afternoon with a joking Guido. Clelia wasn't exactly in the mood for badinage, so I imagine he soon left off. They told me to wait for them because they meant to return in a few days; I felt a bit sad watching them go. The truth is that I had wanted Doro to take me with them.

The next morning I was with Ginetta on the beach, and after talking a while about Clelia I didn't know what more to say, when some young men came to take her away. I circulated among the umbrellas. I caught sight of Nina and turned toward the sea. I expected Berti to show up any moment.

But instead, on my way back to the road, I met Guido. He had already dropped the car at the garage. He told me the couple were staying on at Genoa. Their doctor was away, and Clelia hadn't taken the trip very well. "It's a bore," he said. "Everybody's leaving this year."

Berti, as usual, put in an appearance at the trattoria. He crept in like a shadow; I was conscious of him standing in front of the table before I raised my eyes. He seemed quite calm.

fudging by his bored and empty expression, I would have said that he knew about the departure. Instead he asked me if I had gone to the beach that morning. As we talked, I worried about what I should say to him. I asked him when he was going back to the city.

He made an irritated gesture.

"They are all going back," I said.

When he heard Clelia's news, he fiddled with his box of matches. I had not explained the reason for her departure. He seemed rather cast down,- then it occurred to me that perhaps he might be thinking that he was the reason, because of the dance incident, so I told him that the signora, according to his own lights, had been a good wife and conceived a child. Berti looked at me without smiling, then smiled unaccountably, threw away the matchbox, and stammered: "I expected it."

"It's annoying," I told him, "that these things happen. Women like Clelia should never fall."

Without my having noticed the transition, Berti had become inconsolable. I remember that we returned to the house together. I was silent; he was silent, staring vacantly around.

"Are you going back to Turin?" I said.

But he wanted to go to Genoa. He asked me to lend him the money for the trip. I told him he was mad. He replied that he might have lied and told me he wanted the money to pay off a debt, but that sincerity was wasted on me. He merely wanted to see Clelia again and say hello.

"What are you thinking?" I exclaimed. "That she remembers you?"

He fell silent again. I was thinking how strange the situation was: I had the money for the trip but wasn't going. Meanwhile we arrived at our lane and the sight of the olive tree rubbed me the wrong way. I began to see that no spot is less habitable than a place where one has been happy. I understood why Doro, one fine day, had taken a train to his hills and the morning after had returned to his destiny.

The same evening we met at the cafe. Everyone was there, even Guido—Nina, too, at her table—and I persuaded Berti to return with me to Turin. Guido wanted to take us dancing; he was even willing to take Berti. But that night we both left.